path-of-a-hero
Original: path-of-a-hero on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Young man (flame-like / spiky hair, in green tunic): Father! Adventure calls me! I must leave this sheltered farm behind and venture forth!
Father (bald, long beard): No! You must stick to the family business of farming beets and being relentlessly provincial.
Panel 2:
Father: Dad, every hero story starts off like this. Then the young man breaks free, braves danger and returns, wizened and powerful.
Panel 3:
Father: That's called survivor bias.
Panel 4:
Father: Adventurers who went a long time without getting killed tended to have books written about them. That doesn't mean it always went that way for everyone. Nobody wants to read about the hero who left the farm and immediately got stabbed by highwaymen.
Panel 5:
Father: The only thing you'll accomplish by adventuring beyond the farm is that you'll decrease the gene pool of people who are terrible at understanding basic statistical concepts.
Young man: You cannot stay me from my destiny, father!
Panel 6 (labeled LATER):
The young man lies face-down on the ground.
Caption / thought: This sucks.
Votey:
The young man's face, bleeding from the mouth, lying on the ground with a pool of blood beneath his chin.
Text (handwritten): Dying pointlessly and alone blows.
Young man (flame-like / spiky hair, in green tunic): Father! Adventure calls me! I must leave this sheltered farm behind and venture forth!
Father (bald, long beard): No! You must stick to the family business of farming beets and being relentlessly provincial.
Panel 2:
Father: Dad, every hero story starts off like this. Then the young man breaks free, braves danger and returns, wizened and powerful.
Panel 3:
Father: That's called survivor bias.
Panel 4:
Father: Adventurers who went a long time without getting killed tended to have books written about them. That doesn't mean it always went that way for everyone. Nobody wants to read about the hero who left the farm and immediately got stabbed by highwaymen.
Panel 5:
Father: The only thing you'll accomplish by adventuring beyond the farm is that you'll decrease the gene pool of people who are terrible at understanding basic statistical concepts.
Young man: You cannot stay me from my destiny, father!
Panel 6 (labeled LATER):
The young man lies face-down on the ground.
Caption / thought: This sucks.
Votey:
The young man's face, bleeding from the mouth, lying on the ground with a pool of blood beneath his chin.
Text (handwritten): Dying pointlessly and alone blows.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A young man with spiky, flame-like hair in a green tunic tells his bald, long-bearded father, 'Father! Adventure calls me! I must leave this sheltered farm behind and venture forth!' The father refuses: 'No! You must stick to the family business of farming beets and being relentlessly provincial.' The young man argues that every hero story starts this way, with the young man breaking free, braving danger, and returning wizened and powerful. The father replies, 'That's called survivor bias,' explaining that adventurers who survived a long time got books written about them, but nobody writes about the hero who left the farm and immediately got stabbed by highwaymen. He concludes that the only thing the young man will accomplish by adventuring is decreasing the gene pool of people terrible at understanding basic statistical concepts. The young man defiantly shouts, 'You cannot stay me from my destiny, father!' In the final panel, labeled LATER, the young man lies face-down on the ground, thinking 'This sucks.' Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the young man's face lying on the ground, bleeding from the mouth into a pool of blood, with handwritten text reading 'Dying pointlessly and alone blows.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.